The Last of Us: ClickClickDead
by Micahku
Summary: A side story short about an inept survivor on the run and the heartless bitch he works for.


The Last of Us: Click...Click... Dead.

"I can't find the exit!"

Nathan panted aggressively as he struggled to steady a revolver in his hand. His radio crackled as a voice shouted from the small camping walkie talkie.

"If you're not running then you are fucking wrong! Get your ass out of there!"

The hallway he chose to catch his breath proved to be counterproductive. He could hear the clicks and screeches that followed them drawing nearer from the darkness that stretched down the corridor. Pinpointing where they were coming from wasn't hard.

"I'm surrounded. They're going to tear me apart. There's nowhere to run!"

A familiar terrifying click made him turn a hundred-eighty degrees quickly. The move was followed by six blind gun shots into the darkness, followed by six frantic empty clicks of the spent chambers, followed by a multitude of far deadlier clicks and those nerve shattering screeches that accompanied them.

Nathan threw the gun down the hallway and turned and ran back the way he had came. The lights above him flickered with a menacing, fluorescent reminder that between those brief moments of light, a clicker could emerge and tear his throat out of his neck.

He tried suppress the terrifying idea of dying in such a visceral way, in the dark no less.

"Just keep moving," he said to himself. As if his petty, internal pep talks were going to change his circumstances.

Nathan hadn't wanted to be the one for this particular supply run. Not that venturing out into abounded quarantine zones was leisurely for anyone. But for Nathan, the camp-wide self-fulfilling prophecy, did his best to avoid _any_ supply duties. His excuses were, in his defense, creative, but when survival became a daily crapshoot mixed with blind luck, not pulling your part made you unreliable. And when you constantly had to rely on each other to survive, you might find yourself in a building full of clickers, alone, with no help coming.

"Come on! You gotta send someone to get me! I don't wanna die like this!"

Static. Nathan begged some more, he pleaded for his life but he was beginning to get the sense that he should have helped out more around camp. It wasn't the first time he had this thought. His journal entries would reveal that he was constantly afraid of this very situation. He'd try to worm out of another run, Shelly would express that her shit filter was full and she would send him, on his own, to a complete a supply run that even the most confident of gamblers wouldn't bet on.

" _Click... Clickclickclick..."_

The sound made Nathan's heart jump in his chest. He'd heard that sound before that night. That guttural calling card of arguably the most dangerous of the infected. The fungus growing in the once-human's pre-frontal cortex had advanced to a stage that made it blossom out of the skull, portending from the brain, causing blindness and a deformity that could be described as a hellish sort of rotting cauliflower.

His terrifying analysis of the creature was abruptly cut short as a cold and slimy hand grabbed his wrist, the clicking was directly in his ear now. He braced for the pain that he was about to be plunged into. He'd seen the agony of others who were unfortunate enough to be caught off guard by a clicker. He wouldnt ever forget the terror painted on their faces as those blind monsters lumbered toward them, teeth gnashing, drool spilling from their ruined, rotten and flesh covered teeth. The sound those teeth made against human flesh was deafening. The creatures seemed to have the bite power of a full grown savannah lion.

"EEEEAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHGHH!"

Shelly held the radio in her hand. Nathan's final cries echoed out into the dim lit room from her walkie talkie. Once the cries had ceased, there were a few a seconds of only clicking... and what sounded like hyenas chewing on a wildebeest. The noise went silent as Shelly set the walkie talkie down. She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

"Lights," she said calmly as she raised an old zippo to her mouth. After a few unsuccessful attempts to ignite her smoke, she dropped the lighter on the ground. The first set of gas powered lights began to flicker to life.

"Someone give me a fucking light," she snarled into the darkness surrounding her. More lights, further away flickered to life, revealing the shadowy shape of a large crowd. The lights grew brighter as they reached their optimum temperature.

Shelly, with her cigarette finally lit, looks out into what the powerful lights revealed as a crowd of almost a thousand people. Dirty, grungy, scarred and exhausted faces stared back at her.

"That is what happens when you don't want to contribute. You find yourself out in a QZ full of clickers with no idea what the hell to do. Nathan was lazy. Nathan got eaten by clickers. Fuck Nathan."

The faint sound of whimpering could be heard from the back Shelly's audience, Nathan's wife, no doubt.

"Now." Shelly exhaled a cloud of smoke as she spoke. "Who would like to volunteer to pick up Nathan's slack?"


End file.
